Messianic Hope in Hamburg, 1666

Source Description

Moments of upheaval are particularly fruitful for excavating the historical
past. The eruption of a cause célèbre affords
an opportunity not only to examine particular ruptures, but also to gain
insights into the structures of social life that are interrupted by them. The
news of the coming of the Messiah in the years 1665–66 represents one such moment in the
story of the Jews of Hamburg as recounted by the memoirist, Glikl of Hameln. In Book III
of her remembrances, Glikl reports the transition between elation and despair as
promises of the Jews’ redemption first came to northern Europe only to
be dashed by the conversion of the redeemer to Islam in Constantinople.
Glikl’s account of
the Sabbatean movementJewish messianic
movement of the followers of Schabbtai Zvi in Hamburg is revealing
for its vivid portrait of the energy of the Jews in the city when the news first
arrived, for thinking about the communication of news between distant
communities—especially the entrepôtstransshipment port of the Sephardicdiaspora in the Italian Peninsula,
Ottoman
Empire, and northwestern Europe—and for considering the differences between
the various Jewish groups within the city of Hamburg itself.

The Author and the Text

Glikl, daughter of
Judah Leib, was born in Hamburg in 1646 and died in Lunéville in Lorraine
1724. A daughter of a trader and businesswoman, she was
married at the age of 14 to a businessman named Haim of
Hameln, with whom she operated a firm that traded in precious
metals and stones. Glikl bore 14 children, of whom 12 survived past infancy.

Glikl’s text was not
written as a diary that chronicled events immediately as they transpired.
Instead, Glikl
produced her memoir as a reckoning with the past, prompted by family hardship.
Glikl appears to
have worked on the text in two distinct stages. She tells her children, for whom
the memoir was written, that she was first motivated to stave off her
melancholia after the death of her husband Haim
(1690). But a significant portion of her
remembrances are dedicated to a retrospective self-fashioning after the
bankruptcy and death of her second husband, Cerf Levi of
Metz (1712). Whereas the first union was
characterized by affection, partnership, and prosperity, the second was marred
by financial ruin, poverty, and hardship. Her recollections of the Sabbatean
movementJewish messianic movement of the
followers of Schabbtai Zvi in Hamburg are therefore
also part of a backward glance through history, colored by the changing fortunes
of her family.

Glikl’sZikhroyneswestern Yiddish for “Remembrances” blend personal narrative with the
larger context of Jewish life and collective peoplehood, and intersperse
moralistic folktales and elements of popular piety with recollections of events.
As such, the text might be profitably considered at once a memoir of things
past, a justification for the present, and an ethical will for the future of her
intended audience, to whom the work is addressed: her children.

The Context: The Sabbatean MovementJewish messianic movement of the followers of Schabbtai
Zvi

The Sabbatean movementmessianic jewish
movement which was well-found by Schabbtai Zvi originated in
Palestine in 1665. It centered
around a man, Shabbetai
Zevi, who for much of his life had experienced mystical
visions, which manifested in extreme forms of asceticism mingled with
flagrant violation of traditional Jewish practices such as observance of
fast days and of dietary laws. In the spring of 1665, Shabbetai’s personal prophecies were transformed into an
international Jewish affair when he attracted the support of Nathan of Gaza, who
publicly proclaimed Shabbetai to be the Jewish messiah. Jews from across the
Ottoman
Empire and Europe became
adherents of Shabbetai. The movement was intense but short-lived. In
December of 1665
Shabbetai traveled
from Palestine to Izmir and then
onward to Constantinople, with the declared intent to overthrow the
Ottoman Sultan. Arriving in Constantinople,
Shabbetai was
imprisoned by the Sultan’s guards, and, in the winter
of 1666, after being offered a choice of conversion
to Islam or death, he chose the former. The movement did not collapse after
the loss of its leader; word of Shabbetai’s conversion
inspired creative rationalization of this act of seeming betrayal, and
adherents of the movement (in one form or another) have continued into the
modern period.

Networks of Letters

The movement traveled on the wings of letters. The information converged at
certain points, such as Hamburg . Glikl reports that news came to Hamburg in the form
of letters around February 1666, written by Jews
in Ottoman Palestine, Egypt, and
especially from the Jewish community of Izmir, reporting on
rumors and prophecies. The letters came to the Sephardic
(“Portuguese”) Jews of the city, who had ties to Jews in the
Ottoman
Empire on account of their membership in a large trading
diaspora that
stretched from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. These descendants of the
Jews of Spain and Portugal could be
found primarily in the ports of northern Europe and
the Mediterranean, and they conducted long-distance
communication through letters. Earlier letters had arrived from Egypt to Hamburg that
announced the news of the Messiah’s arrival. Originating in the Ottoman Empire, the
letters did not primarily come addressed to the Ashkenazic (“German”) Jews of the city, whose
networks linked them to other Ashkenazic Jews in Frankfurt,
Prague,
Worms,
and Poland-Lithuania. Nevertheless, Ashkenazim too were swept up in the
excitement in Hamburg. The flow of information thereby also reveals
insights into the contacts between the different Jewish groups in Hamburg’s urban
spaces.

News Arrives in Hamburg

Glikl reports that
with each arrival of a letter, the recipients would carry it to the
synagogue to be read aloud. Despite the fact that this synagogue was the
domain of the Sephardic
Jews, the Ashkenazic Jews
followed into their spaces in order to hear the tidings of the messiah’s
arrival. The very costume of the Sephardic youth reflected their embrace of
major change: broad silk ribbons that they wore as sashes (“this was the
livery of Shabbetai
Sevi,” says Glikl), and they made their way to the synagogue to with
great fanfare. The heresy-hunter Rabbi
Jacob Sasportas
similarly described the events, recalling the audiences of gentiles who came
to marvel at Jews engaging in song and dance over the imminent redemption.
It seemed as though their long-standing hopes had been fulfilled and their
prayers had been answered: an end to their dispersal was at hand, and an
ingathering of their exiles would return them to the Land of Israel
where they would no longer live as a tiny minority that was tolerated but
subjugated. In fact, Shabbetai Sevi’s followers began to alter their practice in
keeping with their belief that a messianic era had arrived: they abolished
the Ninth of Av day of mourning for the
destroyed Temple in Jerusalem—observed by Jews for centuries—expecting the
swift reconstruction of the Jewish holy places in Jerusalem, and
composed prayers for the newly arrived King Messiah. Not all Jews were
prepared to openly acknowledge such dramatic change, at least not publicly:
leaders of the Sephardic
community attempted to take measures to prevent word of traveling beyond the
synagogue (to Christian neighbors). The energy of the movement still
garnered the attention of non-Jews, however, and reports about the Jewish
messiah by Christian observers circulated in the Netherlands,
France,
and England.

Believers and Disappointments

The ramifications of hope were practical, immediate, and—for some—lasting. In
March 1666 prayers for the King Messiah were
introduced into the Hamburg synagogue. Jews made provisions to leave their
homes and lives in exile and to travel to Jerusalem. As
Glikl reports,
“some of them, alas, sold everything they owned, their house and homestead,
and waited daily for redemption.” Jews of the surrounding region fixed their
attention on Hamburg, the bustling port city, as a point of embarkation
for the ingathering of exiles to the Holy Land.
Glikl’s
father-in-law, a resident of Hameln, shipped two
crates filled with linens and dried fruit and meats—all of the goods he
would need for his new life in Palestine—and set
up a temporary home in Hildesheim. Those crates languished for over a year in
Hamburg,
until finally the family discarded the withering food before it ruined the
rest of the contents of the crates, and still they waited longer (three
further years) without fully giving up hope. Glikl’s father-in-law’s
sojourn in Hildesheim became a permanent settlement.

This spirit pervaded Jewish society in Hamburg and nearby
Altona,
reaching beyond the conduct of individuals into matters of communal order.
The expectation of immediate redemption prompted a resolution to a
longstanding dispute over a burial ground in
Ottensen. When the Ashkenazic Jews of Hamburg sought to
establish a communal presence that was independent both of the Sephardim in the city and
of the Ashkenazim of
neighboring Altona, they set their sights on gaining the rights of
burial in the city—an important marker in communal autonomy. When this
administrative affair was resolved in 1666,
messianic hope seeped into even the legal provisions of the document:
“Even if the redemption in the World to Come
arrives before this time, that is before Hanukkah5427 [December 1666] the Hamburg Community must give the Altona Community [the
remaining] 50 Reichstaler, and the
Altona
Community must donate it for the rebuilding of the Temple
[in Jerusalem]. If the Redemption should come between Hanukkah5427 and the
New Year of
5428 [ie,
between December 1666 and September 1667], then of those 50 Reichstaler 25 should go to the rebuilding
of the Temple.”Bernhard Brilling, “An umbekanter
document fun Shabbetai Zevi’s zayt,” Yivo-Bletter 5 (1933), p.
45.

But the messiah did not come. Within a short time the movement inspired a
counter-movement of faithful who sought to restore order by weeding out
heresy wherever they could find it. Glikl faulted the sins
of Jews, especially their failure to deal in loving kindness with one
another, as responsible for the failing. Her casting of the events of 1666 are tinged with gendered language and motherly
sentiment. In describing the anticipation of redemption, she evokes the
image of a mother crouching on the birthing stool, expectant of the joy of a
newborn child, only to find no child coming, simply the nothingness of wind.
Glikl knew of
such pains, herself; her chronology of the movement roughly coincided with
the short life of her daughter, who died after only three years of life. In
looking back on those years and recording the painful memory in her
Rememberances, she could not resist linking the pain of a bereaved mother
with the collective anguish of broken messianic promise. And yet she closes
her telling of this episode with lingering hope and the prayer that one day
God will bring joy to the Jews with complete redemption.

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About the Author

Joshua Teplitsky, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of History at Stony Brook University. His work focuses on Jewish life in the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg monarchy in the early modern period (16th–18th centuries) with an emphasis on the city of Prague. His book, Prince of the Press, on the life and famous library of David Oppenheim (1664-1736), is forthcoming with Yale University Press.

Recommended Citation and License Statement

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.